This unique idea for a business card isn’t strictly Japanese but its inclusion can be justified on three criteria:
- It was first spotted by Geisha Asobi
- It’s like the Day of the Triffids keitai things
- alfalfa looks sort of similar to sakura
- There must be similar cool Japanese cards
This particular one does a good job of setting just “another bloomin’ designer” apart from the pack. That’s what business cards are supposed to do, of course. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow says of this minor marketing masterpiece:
Check out this lovely design for a business card that sprouts a miniature garden when you dip it in water. “The result was a business card that worked like a miniature house-plant, growing alfalfa or cress when dipped in water — a business card for another bloomin’ designer.” The logo was also cut into a “seed stencil” that allowed the logo to be grown on either earth or lawn; on uncut grass, the message would remain hidden until the area was mown.”
But with a bounty of mysterious t-shirts and funny signs virtually coming out of our yin yangs, there must also be some equally interesting Japanese business cards, maybe printed in Engrish? I think the next time a Japundit reader comes across one, that they should whip out the old camera phone and capture it for posterity and comment? [Source: EBT]
There’s a Japanese publisher called PIE Books that has tons of design books with real world example. Including two books on business card design. (scroll down)
Not all are Japanese meishi, but many are. We’ve got several of their books at the office.
By the way, if you upload someone’s meishi to the web, you’d better either check with them or obscure the name, email, address etc. Japanese privacy laws have gotten much stricter. And of course, instead of going after a ku-yakusho for accidentally leaking tens of 1000s of private records, they’d go after a lone blogger. \(*0*)/
Not the kind of card you would want in your wallet a rainy day.
[…] to the garden-variety business cards considered here not that long ago, Arigatou, a company specializing in the sale of laser-etched food products, is […]
[…] would remain hidden until the area was mown. But with a bounty of mysterious t-shirts source: Green Business Card, […]